
A Language of Limbs
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Zoe Terakes
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Aisha Dee
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Sonya Cullingford
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By:
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Dylin Hardcastle
About this listen
"The prose is textured, viscous almost, an ooze of sweet honey shot through with golden light . . . A Language of Limbs is a novel of (impeccable) vibes and mood, a gay hymnal written from inside the guts of the two protagonists."—Yves Rees, Australian Book Review
A breathtaking, sliding-doors, will-they-won’t-they love story and a tender epic that explores the weight of a choice, the love of community and how joy is found in even the darkest corners.
Newcastle, Australia, 1972. On a sticky summer night, a choice must be made: To give in to queer desire or suppress it? To venture into the unknown or stay the course? In alternating chapters, we trace the two versions of a life that follow.
In one, a teenage girl is caught kissing her neighbor and is kicked out from her home. She lands at a queer communal home in Sydney called Uranian House, where she meets the people who will forever become her family. Meanwhile, in the second, a teenage girl pushes down her lustful dreams of her best friend and eventually makes her way to a university in Sydney to study English literature.
During pivotal moments, the physical space between these two women closes—like when they each meet the first great loves of their lives in 1977 at a protest, or when, almost a decade later, they are both rushed to the hospital with only a curtain between them. Through the AIDS crisis—and from classrooms to art galleries, beds to bars and hospitals to homes—we witness these two lives shadow each other until, finally and poignantly, they collide.
©2025 Dylin Hardcastle (P)2025 Penguin AudioCritic reviews
Longlisted for the Stella Prize
Shortlisted for Dymocks Book of the Year 2024 in Australia
Most Anticipated by OUT Magazine, The Nerd Daily and LGBTQ Reads
"Hardcastle handily crafts two distinct voices for the alternating story lines, revealing the ripple effects of choosing one path over another. It’s a captivating display of how one decision can shape a life."—Publishers Weekly (starred)
"Vivid and poignant, with flashes of the experimental and poetic, the novel serves as a record of queer life in Australia in the ’70s and ’80s and asks us to consider how and why we love."—Booklist
“This novel is an exquisite thing, burning with desire.”—2025 Stella Prize Judges
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